Despite the present state of art in most countries and mainly in less developed ones, not rarely a big industrial plant having several equipment manufactured in the past can be found, which are not suited for updating. The latter, called conventional equipment, operate side by side with a large variety of modern equipment. For modern equipment one shall understand apparatuses and devices having automation or not, standing along or controlled through industrial computer systems, presenting as many interface types as may be the number of models, manufacturers and applications addressed, production style, marketing needs, economical conditions, etc.
Even when coexisting with new devices required by technology advance, conventional equipment are unsuited to communicate to control equipment, or business computers used by industry or the owner company, although they should be integrated to the control process. This happens because each area in the same company may have its own language, or terminology, and requirements, which may be too complex for integration and yet because each equipment manufacturer or industry owner eventually has its own marketing goals and industrial secrets that cannot be disclosed. Thus, up to now it has been very difficult, if not impossible, to create an economic, reliable, fast and compatible solution to this problem.
If for one side this situation can be realized, for the other it is unacceptable that we shall remain underdeveloped to accomplish high yield and reach progress and quality standards through the constraint of using manual controls. Even when the latter relate to conventional equipment only and their production control data, or else to modern devices and their derived information, concerning an automated process, this lack of connectivity due to equipment variable complexity, methods, communication patterns or protocols, requirements, languages, etc. is not reasonable.
lt is also unsatisfactory that all these systems and functions cannot be integrated and designed far economic optimization, free of their specific nature or area to which they are technically related.
This asynchronous performance of industry most times creates the need for drastic changes in existing plants, sometimes impossible unless a massive investment is carried ion. Therefore, industries choose the adoption of a lower technological standard for operation, according to the related social and financial ambient, assuming a priority that some problems should survive to this so called modernization, that obviously should not root up the question, expending funds without getting the expected and suitable return.
From manual records in file cards, production line data are manually entered into computing systems together with administrative and/or business data, the outputs or reports or lists of which are then sent to process analysts, sometimes through non-electronic or automated mailing services.
Only after all that, may analysts detect continued errors or distortions that shall repeat in the production line along the process already mentioned. It can be easily derived that when a correction occurs, the production cost shall be already affected by time, material, labor and money irreversibly lost in an uncorrection production, or else with product quality at least seriously lowered.
Although in some instances one can find a correct,on time of about 48 hours after problem detection, an average time ranging from 17 to 24 hours is normally found into the textile industry, for example.
Up to now, in an effort to solve the problem, suppliers of control technology have presented unsatisfactory modes, despite high investments in microcomputer networks. This is because essential requirements are not fulfilled or privileged information is required, or yet partial or not integrated solutions are presented invalidating the whole process, since human mistakes eventually made during non- automated data handling operations cannot be avoided.
Intermediate processes using a magnetic devices as data recording medium, acting as support for business systems, are not capable to surpass the barriers of speed and synchronism among data collection, related analysis and reaction for distortion correction. They are also unsuitable in an industrial environment whether for damages from magnetic and electromagnetic radiation or the generation of the necessity for other controls related to this medium, adding cost, bureaucracy and complexity to the process itself.
Computer interfaces for several sensors are broadly known, but their hardware and particularly their software development are carried at high cost, turning them into highly dedicated specialists that can be hardly updated, changed of altered and even adapted for another industry of equipment type. Besides, the inexistence of such an apparatus compatible to all protocols, transmission rates and data processing, modern technology improvements, etc., finally jeopardizes the benefits offered.
Another drawback for the development of a solution unto now has been the particular activities of certain industries, mainly textile industries, relying on some manual operations where automation is not yet possible yet, regardless the required quantity or quality of the final product. Into these environments due to their inherent characteristics there is little space, although there is intense motion, leading thus to a physical restriction related to the implementation and use of a computer terminal exactly where it could be more necessary.
All the above-mentioned constraints have led to the creation of a solution as fast, reliable, integrated, compatible and versatile as simple, easy to handle, economic and financially feasible and free from lack of space.